#thumbplay

This article is primarily about Pandora and it's stock price, and how Spotify may be a threat to it.

But, the interesting tidbit I wanted to call attention to was the info about Clear Channel's iHeartRadio service and it's upcoming release of new features including "millions more songs than Pandora" and the ability to make playlists.  In other words, this is the soon-to-be released descendant of Thumbplay!

Many people who used Thumbplay (including myself) have fond memories of it, and were sad to see its doors closed when iHeartRadio acquired it. But, it looks like they do still plan to release a new incarnation.

Clear Channel's chairman of making-radio-interesting-again Bob Pittman has said, over and over and over again, that Pandora isn't radio.

"Pandora is not really radio in that it's not curated. It's more like a playlist that you put on shuffle," he said. (If you're looking for some fun, try counting how many holes you can poke in that argument!)

Anyway, that apparently won't keep the largest radio broadcaster in the country from completely ripping Pandora off.

Radio-Info reports that tomorrow Clear Channel will announce an update to their iHeartRadio online platform, coming in September. The update will include a custom radio feature, which is "like Pandora" only with more songs (Pandora has 800,000 songs in its library, for the record) and no ads until 2012.

So if you thought listening to customizable Internet radio from a start-up in California was fun, wait 'til you get to have the exact same experience again! Only this time, it's from the massive media conglomerate that's responsible for most of the shit on your FM band.

I got an e-mail from Thumbplay saying they're shutting down the service on June 13th. I was disappointed to see no word on what would become of their integration into iHeartRadio yet.  Here's hoping it comes back in some form!

Clear Channel Radio has officially announced the purchase of Thumbplay's cloud music service. The acquisition does not include Thumbplay’s ringtone business which was sold toe SendMe Mobile in late March. Terms of either sale were not disclosed. In a move clearly aimed at Pandora and Songza, Clear Channel will use Thumbplay's platform to add services that enable listeners to create their own personalized radio stations.

Thumbplay's future is uncertain.  Recently acquired by Clear Channel for integration into their iHeartRadio service, it's unclear in what form the Thumbplay service will survive in the future.  Will it simply be re-branded and re-designed to fit into their service?  Will it be trimmed down and absorbed in partial form? Until we know the answers to this I can't really recommend anyone start using it, and in any case it doesn't look like their web site is even accepting new users at this time.

This is a shame because it's a strong service.  I hope it comes out of this better than ever, in which case it could be one of the best out there, but we'll have to wait and see.  For now here's my overview of the service in its current form:

Weaknesses

Library size: With the exception of Rdio, Thumbplay has the most limited selection of the services, at least for the various forms of Electronica that I most commonly listen to. It's not bad, but often lacks one or more albums that most of the other services have.

Playlist genie: If you listen to less well-known artists like I often do, their playlist genie (an otherwise excellent service) will often be unable to generate a playlist of recommended music.  No matter how good it is when it works, it's a serious weakness if it often fails to work at all.

No scrubber (on Android): The PC and iOS versions let you rewind/fast-forward through a song, but not on Android. A frustrating omission made more noticeable because it is included in other versions.

Lack of metadata (iOS and Android): The PC version has some metadata on artists and albums, but the mobile versions have very little.

Strengths

Thumbplay's plain but well-designed UI may not impress too much at first, but with extended use I've come to appreciate how carefully thought-out it is. They pack lots of choices in each screen without having them feel cluttered.  Every feature also pretty much operates how you'd expect it to, with few surprises.

Non-web-browser-based PC client: Their PC client, like the mobile clients, won't "wow" you at first, but it's well designed and just makes sense.  It's Adobe Air-based which some won't like, but it gives it a more polished feel than most of its competitors' PC offerings.

Playlist genie: When it works (see above) the playlist genie is remarkably adept.  You choose a song to have it generate a playlist of related music for you, and it does a great job of finding similar music with lots of gems mixed in. It's not perfect, but head and shoulders above its ham-fisted siblings found in older services like Rhapsody and Napster.  Only Mog's "radio" feature rivals this.  Both playlist genie and Mog use Echo Nest's service for music discovery and I suspect that this is responsible for the similar excellence of both features.

Playlist management: Thumbplay has the best playlist management across all platforms of any of its rivals.  Options to add/edit/remove tracks from playlists work as expected.  It works so well it fades into the background, and only when using the less-capable or less-well-designed playlist features of its rivals that I began to appreciate how well Thumbplay nailed this.  It's a foundational feature of any of these sorts of services, and theirs works very well.

Offline play: Thumbplay makes it easy to save songs/albums/playlists for play offline when cell service is not available, and once again it "just works" with a minimum of fuss.

To Be the Best

Survive the Clear Channel acquisition without losing your strengths

Catch up on the size of your music library to rival your competitors

Get playlist genie to work consistently

Consistent ability to scrub through songs on all platforms

Summary

In this "humorous" video, Clear Channel touts their acquisition of Thumbplay and it's service and technologies.  The video is aimed at advertisers, but makes it clear they intend to keep the functionality of Thumbplay intact in terms of allowing on-demand streaming of exactly the music you want.